


The Tales from the Bar

by ifyouwerewater



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 01:44:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3877615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifyouwerewater/pseuds/ifyouwerewater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy Blake loves and loses Clarke Griffin. Clarke Griffin becomes a legend.  Post-Season 2 finale, canon compliant. Based on “The Tales From The Bar” in I Wrote This For You.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tales from the Bar

_(you’re just another story I can’t tell anymore)_

When she leaves, she becomes a god. She would have hated it. It’s the leaving that really does it, really convinces her people that she is a hero, because they used to say the hero is the one that stays, but the Sky People know better – the hero is the one that can’t stay, not anymore, not after everything she’s done. So they do what human beings have always done: they tell stories. Stories of Clarke Griffin, the eighteen year old girl who led their people out of Mount Weather, who felt so deeply she held the dying enemy in her arms, who tried so hard to do what was right, always, who learned how to heal before she learned how to kill. Clarke Griffin, who left, and her disciples, who stayed, because they could – because she took the weight from their shoulders and carried it with her to the woods. 

The last person to see her, to touch her, to speak to her was Bellamy Blake, and he broke because of it. He looked into her eyes and told her she was forgiven;  he asked her to come inside and was denied; he held her for seconds that he wished felt like eternities. He vaguely remembers hearing her say _may we meet again_ , vaguely remembers repeating it as she moved further and further away from him. Vaguely remembers hearing something in him snap, feeling his heart crumble, dropping his head for just a moment before returning to camp, to his people, the people Clarke left to him.

When she leaves, she becomes a legend. He hears Trigedasleng whispers in the woods, whispers of _Klark kom Skaikru_. Though the truce is over, the Grounders have not attacked. Their Commander must know she has done wrong – her tactics have moved from combative to cautious. The Grounder watch stay close to camp and tell stories to each other, always on guard, never taking aim. Bellamy asks Lincoln to translate with a low, thick voice, eyes cast down, never meeting his friend’s. Lincoln looks gentle for a moment, concerned. Then he speaks: “They’re talking about Clarke.” Bellamy nods, looking up. That part he knows. “I figured.” He exhales. “How bad is it?”

“It’s not.”

“It’s not?”

Lincoln, slowly, begins the story, as the Grounders tell it. Clarke of the Sky People watched her allies leave, all of them, and she stayed. She stood in front of the Mountain alone. She moved it, she destroyed it. She burned the Mountain and the people inside, the enemy. _Jus drein jus daun_. Her people saw the next morning, because she saved them. She went into battle alone and saved everyone.

“Huh.” It’s more of a sigh than a word, but somehow it escapes him, because Bellamy knows better. The Grounders can say what they want about her being alone, but she was never alone – he made sure of that. _Together_ , that’s what they were about. The two of them, together, leading. The two of them, fighting. Together, surviving. Killing. Saving. Always, up until that last moment, they were together.

And then she left him.

He files this one away – better not to think of it. Like his mother, like his crime, like his shame, Clarke Griffin no longer exists to him, not like she used to. Clarke Griffin never sat with him against a tree and told him he wasn’t a monster, she never forgave him, she never told him to face what he’d done, she never said the words _I need you_. She never ran into his arms or said she couldn’t lose him or cried, right in front of him, and pressed her lips to his cheek and she sure as hell never _lingered_ there, not with his hands in her hair and he, he certainly never begged her to stay. He never wanted to reach for her one last time, or hold her against him for just a second longer, or shift his face the tiniest bit and meet her lips, just once. He never closed his eyes and threw his head back as she walked away from him. He never hoped that they _would_ meet again, so he could tell her exactly how he feels about her, how he’s always felt.

This was not a lighthearted, schoolboy crush based on her pretty blonde hair and the way she responded to his sarcasm. This was something more, based entirely on trust, and admiration, and love, real love. The kind that consumes you entirely and changes you into someone more than yourself, more than everything you had been before you knew. And you do know, because you have to know with something like love. He knew. Probably since Atom, but maybe a little after, a little before. The point is, he knew. And because he knew, and because everything that never happened did, in fact, happen, he couldn’t forget her. He couldn’t pretend she was just a dream, or just some girl. He couldn’t pretend she was just who everyone says she was, because she was more than a medical student and she was more than a leader. She was Clarke, and he loved her. So. 

So he could never tell her story.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to bellarkesupernova on tumblr for beta-ing my first Bellarke fic! Also my first post to AO3 :)


End file.
